We All Make Choices
by RJ-Hodgins
Summary: Sometimes we do things in moments of pain that we wish we have never did. Sometimes we keep doing them even if it keeps the pain alive.


A/N - This was not an easy thing to write. I really hated writing it but it just poured out once I started and I couldn't stop.

I know some or most of you might hate me after reading this. Just remember it's all make believe, all right?

I would like the thank the Goddess of Betaing, Caliente0323, for her hard and quick work. Thank you!

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The first time it happened was an accident.

The first time I gave in to my weakness, to the burning in my chest, to my need to feel a little bit normal again, was the night Mark died. I knew no matter how much I needed it, no matter how much I wanted it, my wife wouldn't be the shoulder I needed to cry on or the hands I needed to hold me back from falling over the edge. I hadn't planned on it, hadn't planned on anyone being in that on call room. When it was over and we both realized what had happened, we swore we'd never do it again. Never speak of it again.

The second time wasn't.

The second time was in a little used on call room, one I paged him to. As soon as the lock clicked in the door, my clothes were carelessly torn away, landing all over the floor. His hands were on me and my logical side was rendered soundless. Between the deep thrusts that I had missed so much were thoughts that I couldn't quite get to go away. Thoughts of my wife lying at home in our bed, still not able to accept her new life. The life I forced upon her when I made the call and he made that first cut into her leg.

The third time was against the wall in the same on call room, my mind drifting to the first time we had done this so many years ago, in the basement apartment I had at this very same hospital. He still had that animalistic feeling to his thrusts, still left me sore in places that no toy my wife brought home ever could.

This time my thoughts weren't on the wife who was at home, angry as always. Her dimples hidden from me no matter what I said or did. The stress that we had once solved with sex and locking ourselves away for the weekend overtook her. My thoughts were also not on my daughter, who wouldn't stay potty trained no matter how many cookies we used to bribe her or how many spankings I gave her when my fuse ran short. Thoughts of whom I had been once upon a time, thoughts of all I had lost over the years, stayed away as I dropped my head back and arched up to meet him.

The fifth time was the day before Arizona returned to work. Knowing that she was going to be back, limping though the halls, working in the same OR that I had forced her leg to be cut off in, it was all too much for me. I needed to get out of my own head. I needed to do something to turn off my brain. I needed to forget for a second, so I could catch my breath.

He still liked it when I whispered the most outrageously dirty things in his ear before nipping at it. He was older, though. Aren't we all? So halfway through, we moved to the bed, so his back didn't lock up before surgery. It wouldn't do for that to happen and questions to come up.

When we finished, we didn't lay there and cuddle or hold each other. He got redressed and told me to page him anytime. I laid there in the dark for a few seconds, trying to figure out when I had become this person again. I had moved so far away from this point and yet somehow I was back at it.

The time was six months to the day from the first time we fell into an on call room bed with each other. I was on top and he was lying under me, his eyes closed as he tried not to think of the woman he really wanted. The woman that he still wanted no matter what the papers of divorce or the wedding band he couldn't wear anymore said. My mind was on the wife who was in the middle of her first surgery back, the one she wouldn't shut up about for the last 2 weeks.

There are times, like these, when I'm riding the person I'm sleeping with, who isn't my wife, that I wish I had never answered the page that led me to meet George. Times when I wish I hadn't seen him or fallen in love with him or married him. It would have been so easy to stay the girl who wore last night's eye makeup to work. The girl who is hardcore and doesn't care. The girl who wouldn't think twice about anything, but finding a way to get a free drink and a hot guy under or over her that night.

This time when he finished, he's not so quick to get up. His memories of that girl that he was thinking about still keeping him warm. I could see it all over his face, see how much he wanted to open his eyes and have her lying next to him instead of me. If he was lying next to her that meant his life hadn't gone to shit. It meant he hadn't cut off my wife's leg. It meant he might still be able to look himself in the mirror. I couldn't help, but catch a small hint of disappointment when he opened his eyes and saw me again. He said to me that we shouldn't do this anymore. I laughed at him and said we shouldn't have done it in the first place. A half-hearted shrug was all I got back from him before he got up, dressed, and left.

A few times later, the number not important anymore, he was rougher than he'd ever been. He had a tough loss and paged me the second that he got out of the OR, an OR where he worked with my wife. She's somewhere in the hospital hurting and I was lying under this guy getting my brains fucked out. It hurt, but it felt good, too. I was going to feel it later when I had to replace a hip and a knee. Bending and lifting was going to be a bitch, but it was better than not having the soreness. A soreness my wife and I hadn't given each other in too long to remember.

When I found my wife, hours too late to do anything for her, to take her pain away, she asked where I had been in the hours since her surgery ended. I told her I had been in the basement trying to think, trying to figure some things out. I could tell by the way she was looking at me she was trying to believe me. Trying to get herself to believe the lies I was spreading. I still am not sure that she did.

Then it happened: the day the stick turned pink. It was just after my little girl's birthday. I hadn't been feeling well for a few weeks and we hadn't really been all that careful about using protection. It was something that we had always just forgotten or didn't care enough to remember.

He and I sat down with my wife and told her. Told her that it was only once and we were both having hard days. Told her that it hadn't been going on for months. And she wanted to save the family that we had so much that she made herself believe it. She knew that I could take away her little girl if she called us on our bullshit. So she swallowed it and smiled through it, going so far as to say that she was happy that our daughter would have a sibling.

I knew that I had to break it off, that I needed to stop it, but the thought of not having him in my bed anymore made me sad. Even though my wife had started doing everything she knew how to please me in bed, tried to be who she once was. She tried to be perfect, so that I wouldn't go back to him, even though we both knew there was nothing to go back to. He and I kept right on fucking through my pregnancy and after our son was born. Somehow I was selfish enough to give him his daddy's name.

The last time was the night before his girl came back. Finally healthy and sane again. Finally back to the resident who had the straw-colored hair and the body of a model. She had become an attending in another city, hours away, and he rushed to her side as soon as she came back, all the anger and hurt and pain that he had felt for her up until that moment gone. He had been so in love with her for so long that the idea of her being here again and him not being with her didn't even hit him.

So here I am, lying against my wife, our daughter and our son in the bed between us. I haven't felt like a family in close to two years. As I watch my wife, holding the son that I made with some other man, made while I still wore the wedding ring she had given me, I think maybe she has forgiven my sins. As I watch her throw her head back, laughing at something he did that I missed, I am grateful that even if I don't deserve it that she loves me again.


End file.
